Eleven Men Get Jail Terms for Plotting U.K. Terror Attack

By Jeremy Hodges -
Apr 26, 2013

Eleven men were sentenced to as
much as life in prison for planning a U.K. terror attack meant
to be more devastating than the 2005 bombings of London buses
and trains.

Irfan Naseer, 31, identified as the ringleader of the group
by prosecutors, was sentenced to at least 18 years in prison at
a hearing in London today, West Midlands Police said in a
statement. Rahin Ahmed, 26, who gambled away the group’s funds
on currency and oil trades, was sentenced to 12 years.

“The only barrier between Naseer’s team and mass murder
was the intervention of the authorities,” Judge Richard Henriques said when issuing the sentences, according to police.

Members of the group, which planned to destroy multiple
targets with eight bombs hidden in backpacks, traveled to
Pakistan and recorded suicide videos before their arrest in
September 2011, prosecutors said in court documents. U.K. courts
are grappling with terrorist cases as U.S. authorities deal with
the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, which left three
people dead last week.

“Their aim was clear,” Marcus Beale, assistant chief
constable at West Midlands Police, said in an e-mailed
statement. “To cause death and mass casualties.”

Jail Terms

Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali, both 28, were sentenced to 18
and 15 years, respectively, for their central roles in the plot,
police said. The remaining seven men were handed terms ranging
from six years to 40 months in prison.

Ahmed lost 62 percent of the 14,550 pounds ($22,500) meant
to finance the terror cell on small-volume currency trades over
four weeks in 2011. He pleaded guilty to terror offenses at a
hearing in August.

Ahmed’s use of the financial markets to boost the group’s
fortune was the first incident of its kind, West Midlands Police
said.

The men, all from Birmingham, central England, raised
thousands of pounds posing as fake Muslim Aid charity workers
collecting money from the public, prosecutors said at a four-
month trial that ended in February.

The surveillance operation, according to police the largest
U.K. terrorist investigation since 2006, secretly recorded
conversations in which the men said the attack would be
“another 9/11,” and “revenge for everything,” prosecutors
said in court documents.

The men also compared themselves to characters from the
“Four Lions,” a British comedy film released in 2010 about
four would-be terrorists in northern England.